


In Warded Rooms

by KissMeKate



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: Canon Divergence - Post-Avengers (2012), Eventual Smut, F/M, Kidnapping, POV Second Person, Slow Burn, no y/n
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-17
Packaged: 2020-03-05 15:46:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,673
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18831730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KissMeKate/pseuds/KissMeKate
Summary: It’s not uncommon to see dog walkers or clam diggers or fellow runners as you jog along the beach, but on this foggy morning it’s a surprise to say the least to see a broodingly handsome man, tall and slender, standing and staring out to sea. He's about to turn your world upside down...





	1. A Complication

The fog is so thick it practically beads against your skin as you cross the quiet street and take your first strides onto the sand. Your body is already warm from the jog down here, but this is where your run _truly_ begins. With the waves crashing in the distance and the sand beneath your shoes you can let your mind go blank and forget your troubles and disappointments. Cold, salty air stings your throat as you breathe deeply and revel in your solitude.

Or near solitude.

You slow just a little as a tall figure begins to coalesce out of the fog ahead, straight backed and head high as he stares out to sea. Your shoes slap the wet sand near the waterline as you approach, and since he doesn’t even look up, you take the chance to stare. It’s not every day you jog past a sexy guy in an immaculate black suit standing at the tide line, much less one with a strong, slender build and long hair gone wavy with the damp.

He’s clearly lost in his own head, but your own manners or force of habit make you lift one hand as you pass between him and the churning water. “Morning!" 

“Excuse me?” His baffled response confuses you and you break stride, stumbling to a halt as you turn.

“Um. Good morning?” For the first time it hits you that something might be wrong here. The full force of his attention washes over you like an incoming wave, and you can’t help but notice how alone with him you are in the muffling fog, and how very, very out of place he is.

The hairs on the back of your neck stand up and you’re backing away, half-turning to sprint back up to the street. His black hair tumbles around his shoulders as he tips his head. “I’m sorry, you were talking to me?”

The strangeness stills you for just a moment. Who else would you have been talking to? “Sorry to bother you,” you say, and turn away, breaking into motion. 

It’s not as shocking as it should be when you slam immediately into a man’s waiting arms. _His_ waiting arms, unless his identical twin was lurking behind you. Your heart leaps into your throat, blocking the scream that wants to rip free, and you look desperately back over your shoulder, but no one is there. “How did you do that?” you try to demand, but your voice comes out in a raspy whisper. 

His hands tighten on your upper arms, and when you try to step back it’s as if you’ve been frozen in place. “Who sent you?” the man hisses. 

“What?”

“Don’t play the fool with me, girl.” He gives you a little shake and your teeth snap shut on the tip of your tongue. The salty, metallic tang of blood coats your mouth, grounding you. Still, his words make no sense. “Why were you sent here?”

He’s crazy, and his grip is like iron. You reach for a soothing tone. “I wasn’t sent—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. Please just let me go and I’ll go back to my run and leave you—”

“Enough.” Another shake cuts your nervous babbling short. “How did you find me?”

Your panic spikes. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, I swear, please—” You gasp as he suddenly steps backward, jerking you along with him so suddenly that the world seems to flash green for just an instant. Then he spins around and shoves you away from him, and you turn and catch yourself, preparing to run…

Your hands and knees scrape across a carpeted floor. That’s not possible. But the sound of waves is gone, replaced by the slamming of a door, and your captor is standing over you with a knife in his hand. “Take off your jewelry,” he demands. The words wash over you meaninglessly as you gape at your surroundings. You’re in a house, or maybe an apartment. There’s a couch and a fireplace and this is all impossible because you were standing on the beach two seconds ago. The man nudges you with his foot. “I said take the jewelry off.”

This time his words register and you reach fumblingly for the clasp of your necklace. “Of course. Yes. It’s all yours.” You pull both of your rings off, not that either is worth much, and drop all three items into his waiting palm. “There, all yours. I won’t even call the police, just please—”

“The earrings as well,” he interrupts. 

“The—” They’re just cheap costume jewelry, but it’s not worth trying to convince him that they’re worthless. You take them out and, when he frowns at your wrist, you unstrap your sports watch, too. “That’s all of it,” you say, and when he takes a step back, you cautiously get to your feet, eyes on the ground. If this is just a mugging… You can’t explain how you ended up in this house. That green flash—maybe you fainted? You can't explain why he'd bring you here, but if he just wants your jewelry maybe he’ll let you go…

With a burst of speed, he thrusts the knife toward your face. You yelp and jerk backward, slamming against the wall, and your eyes flash to his face only to see mild frustration rather than the rage you’d expected. Still, he advances on you, and there’s nowhere left for you to go as he leans into your face. “I can’t sense a scrap of magic on you, so where is the enchantment?”

Magic? It seems like he’s talking to himself this time, so you don’t answer. Your eyes flick to the door and you wonder if you could get to it if you just push past him.

The man smirks as if he’s read the intention on your face, and lifts the knife, resting the sharp point against your collarbone. “You wouldn’t get far, and if you tried to run I’d likely have to hurt you.” It doesn’t sound like a threat, but you don’t doubt that he means every word. You squeeze your eyes shut and take a shuddering breath. “Can it possibly be that you’re nothing more than an ordinary mortal with the Sight?” he muses.

Mortal? What the _fuck_? “Please.” Your throat is thick with the tears you don’t want to shed. “I don’t know what that means.”

Then his cool hand is pressed against your forehead, and images from your life seem to flash before your closed eyes; you want to scream at how empty it seems. Your dead end job with the boss whose harassment you can barely tolerate anymore. The boyfriend you tossed out after one too many disappointments and betrayals. The pathetic apartment that sits empty without so much as a plant waiting for you to come care for it.

The tears you’ve been holding back finally break free as both his hand and the knife break contact with your skin. “Who are you?” you ask, a desperate plea.

“I am Loki,” he answers. “And you, my dear, are quite the complication.”


	2. An Ancient Prayer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How can it be that the only thing worse than being locked in with a murderous god… is being locked up without him?

You pace the empty living room, your arms wrapped tight around your middle, your mind racing. Loki as in New York Loki? You’d opened your mouth to ask the question, but the man—is he actually even a man?—was gone before you could get the words out. And now you’re alone—or at least you think you’re alone—and Loki is gone.

He’s gone. 

What the hell are you waiting for? You rush the front door, but when you try to pull it open, it won’t budge. The locks seem normal when you click them in and out of place, but the door itself is as frozen in its frame as if it’s just another part of the wall. Your race to the window nets you similar results, but this time you can see outside. Or what should be outside. Instead, there’s nothing beyond the glass but a haze of green that looks like the Aurora Borealis is pressing its face to the pane, and you suddenly aren’t sure you’d want to go out there even if you could get it open.

“Hello?” you call, wondering if he’s watching, but though you stand as still as you can to wait and listen, he doesn’t answer. You aren’t sure if you’re relieved or not. He’s terrifying, especially if he’s _that_ Loki, but so is the idea of being trapped here alone. 

You don’t know how long you spend pacing the confines of the front room, but it’s long enough for your running clothes to begin to feel clammy against your cooling skin. Eventually terror fades away, melting into boredom, and you gather the will to explore the rest of the house. The kitchen seems a safe place to start since you can see a corner of it from the front room. It’s small, almost cozy, but there’s a distinct lack of small appliances. There _is_ a knife block, though, and you pull a heavy chef’s knife free. You don’t really think you can take the magical alien in a fight, but somehow it feels better to have the weight of a weapon in your hand.

The cabinets are mostly bare, and you feel a prickle of unease as you peer into the fridge and find it empty. Surely he didn’t just pick some random abandoned house to strand you in. _Surely_ he’s coming back for you at some point. You try not to think too hard about what he might do if he does return. Or what might happen to you if he doesn’t.

From the kitchen you move toward the back of the house, and you’re relieved when the first room you check is dominated by a large bed. The comforter is sumptuous green, gold, and black, and you have no doubt, even before you catch a subtle scent that you recognize as his, that this is his bedroom. And if this is his space, then at least you haven’t been stranded here to starve to death. There’s a dresser as well, and you slide open a drawer to find a stack of soft tunics. You shut the drawer again, strangely embarrassed, and back out of his personal space. When he _does_ come back, the last thing you want is for him to catch you fondling his underwear.

The next room you find is entirely empty, and the bathroom has only unfamiliar ceramic jars that certainly don’t come from any store you know of. The final room is a library, and you’re excited despite yourself as you take in the shelves that line every wall. Your free hand moves to trace the spines of the nearest books, but your heart sinks when you realize that the lettering across the spines isn’t the Latin alphabet. You’re vaguely familiar with the Elder Futhark runes, but while you know what sounds each rune represents, you only learned them to write notes to your high school friends in ‘code’. This looks like legit Old Norse or… something. You check a few shelves to be sure, but it doesn’t look like you’ll be doing any reading in _this_ library.

As you return to the front of the house, you step softly as if expecting to find him waiting there. He isn’t, though, and you curl up on the couch to await your fate. At some point you doze, and though the eerie green glow outside the window gives no clue of time passing, the hollowness in your stomach tells you that you’ve been here for hours. You massage your naked wrist, frustrated that your absent watch means you have no way to know how long you’ve been waiting. Somehow having to guess just makes everything worse. At least if you knew there’d be some certainty. Something concrete. Hours. Days. He wouldn’t leave you here alone for days, would he?

You take your knife on another tour of the house, but there’s no sign he’s been here while you slept, and aside from the hunger you’re starting to feel awfully gross about having slept in your slightly sweaty running clothes. Still, it takes a couple more rounds of the house before you work up the courage to paw through a crazy god’s leisure wear. You select a tunic that reaches almost to your knees, but the pants situation is hopeless. The tunic is almost as long as a dress… And if you hurry, maybe you can clean and dry your clothes before he even comes back and finds out. 

Heartened, you hurry to the bathroom and snoop through the jars. There’s oil of some kind, and crystals that remind you of bath salts in another, but the third one you try is a powder with the same fresh, herby smell as his bedding. You fill the sink with hot water and a sprinkle of the powder and it seems to make suds, so… good enough.

Even knowing that Loki can apparently teleport, you still check the lock on the bathroom door three times before you can convince yourself to strip. Once you do, you dunk your sweat-dried clothes in the sink to soak and hop into the shower. A pinch of the soap powder seems to work well enough on your hair and another small handful does for the rest of you. You’re practically setting shower speed records as you get back out and wrap yourself in an oversized towel. Despite the rush you feel as you quickly scrub and rinse your clothes, then drape them over the edge of the shower to dry, he doesn’t appear before you curl back up on the couch to wait. 

When you’ve sat long enough that the ache in your back begins to rival your empty belly for attention, you sigh and stand. Your clothes are still damp, so you leave them to their drying and return to the library. You pick up a book at random, flip through the unintelligible pages, and put it back, then another and another. By the third book you’re curious enough to give pronunciation a go, even if just to hear your own voice. “Hail… dagger?, hailer dags kynir…” You know you’re stumbling over the words, but the runes, long relegated to the dusty corners of your mind, are coming back to you. “Hail not…”

“Making yourself at home, I see.”

You scream at the unexpected sound of his voice and spin, one hand instinctively clutching the book to your chest as the other fumbles for the knife you’d set down on the shelf beside you. Loki stands in the doorway, an eyebrow arched, and makes a slow perusal of your person. You feel a flush from your ears to your toes at his unimpressed inspection. 

“Well what else did you expect?” someone shouts, and it takes you a slow, horrified moment to realize that you’d just yelled at a… god? Was he really? He sure wasn’t human. You bite your lip, worried, but he doesn’t exactly seem angry.

A corner of his mouth jumps as if he’s suppressing a smile, and he waves in a gesture that encompasses all of you. “Certainly not to find you wearing my clothing and perusing my library. Your pronunciation is atrocious, by the way.”

He plucks the book from your grasp so quickly that you don’t even have time to raise the knife to ward him off, and by the time you wonder if you need to defend yourself, he’s already stepped away. “Heill dagr,” he begins in a resonant baritone, “heilir dags synir, heil nótt oc nipt…” a faint, wistful smile touches his lips and his eyes drift shut, but he continues to recite from memory, and it could be a spell for all you know because you’re frozen in place, enraptured by the rhythm of the strange words. It’s not until he’s taken the knife out of your limp grasp and made it vanish that you realize how close he’s moved. You should probably be upset about that, but you’re too filled with wonder.

“I wasn’t spying,” you say quietly. 

He hums a noncommittal response, but looks past you. “If you were, you’re terrible at it. I’ve many books of far more interest than that one.”

“So that wasn’t a spell?”

“A prayer,” he says, returning the book to its shelf. “One I have not heard in a very long time.”

“Did you—did you say it often? As a child?” You’re hoping that appealing to sentiment will soften him, but it doesn’t work. His smirk is almost cruel and he’s most certainly amused at your expense. 

“That, little girl, was an appeal to my people.”

“Oh.” You don’t think your light-headedness is solely because of hunger anymore. How long has it been since Old Norse was actually spoken? And then a thought sparks. “Is that why you came back? You heard the prayer—?”

He snorts. “Prayer is about intent, not words. You weren’t praying, you were enacting a massacre upon an innocent language.”

“But you can hear it? When people—when they pray to you?” you press.

In a sudden shift of mood, Loki whirls and stalks toward the door, leaving a hint of basil and mint in his wake. “Sometimes,” he says, his flippant tone at odds with the stiffness of his posture, “if I’m listening.” Then he adds in a quiet mutter, “If anyone cares to bother.” At the doorway he turns and gives you a meaningful glance, and with a last lingering look at the laden shelves, you obey his unspoken command. 

The door clicks shut behind you, and you continue out into the relative openness of the living room without waiting to see what side of it he’s on. It’s not until you reach the couch that you realize how challenging it will be to sit without the tunic riding up and revealing exactly how little you’re currently wearing. You’re still pondering your slim options when the source of your consternation comes striding into the room, his face closed off and cold. “What _were_ you looking for in there?”

As if you’re the one who’s out of line here? Okay, you went through his stuff, but what else were you supposed to do? You hug your arms tight across your middle and scowl, keeping the couch between you and his imposing figure. “You kidnapped me off the beach, mugged me at knife point, and locked me in your house! Alone! I’m cold, I’m starving, and I had no idea if you were even coming back!” Your eyes burn with the desire to cry and you blink rapidly, desperate not to look any more pathetic than you must already. “I was _looking_ for a way to distract myself,” you finish weakly. 

Loki sighs and his expression shifts from to mild exasperation. “Yes, well, I suppose I _had_ forgotten how often you mortals need to eat.”

“You could just let me go,” you whisper without much hope. 

“No,” he says, his tone resigned. “I can’t. You may not have been sent to find me, but there _are_ forces searching for me. Intentional or not, you saw through a veil of invisibility on that beach. Setting you loose in the world is a risk I cannot afford to take just now.”

“But I don’t know anything! I don’t even know where I am. I’d never tell—”

He moves so quickly and so fluidly over the back of the couch that you’d hesitate to call what he did leaping. Then you’re backing away, feeling immensely vulnerable as he looms into your personal space again. You’re basically half naked and his casual living room parkour was just a small demonstration of all the ways he could overpower you if he wanted to. 

“Trust me,” he hisses, “the last thing I want is to be saddled with a stray mortal. I don’t know how you pierced my illusions, but the fact of the matter is, you did, and if I discovered you, then someone else can as well. You don’t _have_ to know anything, you pathetic creature; all the beings hunting me care about is that you _could_ know something, and they would not waste a moment’s concern before tearing your mind apart to find whatever hints they may.” Your heart is pounding and your mouth has gone dry. He peers into your face and, apparently satisfied that you’re properly terrified, he draws himself to his full, imperious height. “Releasing you now would be as good as killing you. I would do just as well to destroy you myself and wipe out whatever small risk your existence might pose.” You stand paralyzed with fear as he holds your gaze, his face a disgusted mask. It looks no less cruel when he adds a sharp smile. “But perhaps you’d rather wait here until I can figure out some other way to be rid of you?”

He seems to be waiting for an answer, but you can hardly breathe—can’t think. Would he really kill you just so he wouldn’t have to bother with you anymore? You don’t realize your eyes are welling up until a tear rolls down your cheek.

Loki makes a production of throwing his hands up and rolling his eyes. “Perfect. Just perfect,” he declares, biting off each word. When he spins to stalk away from you, you could almost swear the phantom edges of a cape swirls after him. He’s really got this villain act down. _Please let it be an act…_

By the time you realize he’s headed for the door, it’s too late to catch him. “Wait!” But he steps into the green shimmer beyond the doorway and the door slams behind him like magic. You grab for the handle, but it’s already sealed fast. How can it be that the only thing worse than being trapped in this house with a murderous god… is being trapped here without him?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for the comments and kudos! I had no idea what to expect from posting my first piece of fic, but the response has been so delightful! Next chapter will feature a lot more Loki interaction, so stay tuned!


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